The World Wide Web (www), the search system for accessing information is accessible on the Internet, an international network of computers. The “web” actually comprises links to information laid on servers/computers in the network we call the Internet. The public use of the Internet was from the beginning search for information, but has been developed and now functions as e-mail and conference systems. As more and more people and organizations use the internet for communication purposes it is understandable that the traffic demands on the network are high.
Improvements are made to allow more and more traffic over the internet so as to further access to information on the web and also to provide fastness, security and redundancy in the use of the web.
The different functions on the Internet uses agreed protocols. One protocol for example concerns the packaging of information to be sent over Internet, which allows that computer networks from different makers can send small data packets of information over the Net. These data packets are built up according to a standardized format, the Internet Protocol IP, where each package has each globally unique sender and receiver addresses, a declaration of the contents and eventually also a serial number such that the received packages may be counted and acknowledged (TCP/IP). To connect separate computer networks routers are used, which transmits the packages between the networks on the routes set up by the TCP-network.
The concept of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networking is greatly improving the traffic on the World Wide Web and will possibly soon be one of the more important improvements since the Internet. The reason is that P2P introduces a dynamic network as opposed to the Internet, where the connections are made in a hierarchal manner, i.e. contacts are made upwards in the net until a router/server etc is found where the intended recipient is found downwards. P2P makes possible the connection of hundreds or thousands of computers sharing resources to form a supercomputer with no central administration, except in some of the file search processes. Using P2P, desktops are not just clients on the Internet but are functioning as servers and file depositories.
For this description the following definitions are relevant. A typical Access Network comprises a Gateway for connection of the aggregation network, typically a LAN, to e.g. the Internet, and Access Nodes AN for connection of end user devices, such as PCs, to the aggregation network. Downstream is referred to as the direction of traffic flowing toward an end user device, i.e. that is entering the AN (access node) from the Aggregation Network side. Upstream is referred to as the direction of traffic flowing from the end user device, i.e. that is entering the AN from the end user line side.
P2P differ in many ways from the original concepts used in implementing the Internet, and also many service provider networks. Most striking is the impact pf P2P on network bandwidth. Especially file sharing applications, but also future applications such as Video conferencing consume a lot of bandwidth upstream as well as downstream.
The reason for the impact on the bandwidth is that in today's access networks, i.e. the network/-s one uses for accessing e.g. the web is usually forced to a central point in the network, e.g. a BRAS (Broadband Remote Access Server) to allow the service provider to have full control over the network resources. However P2P traffic is often local in nature, e.g. often files belonging to one client are likely to be accessed by a client attached to the same access network. It is hence not optimal to force this type of local P2P-traffic to the BRAS only to return back to the same access network again, i.e. the file in question is located somewhere in the local network to which the client belongs. The term “local network” is used in the sense of not having to access a BRAS. The obvious reason is that P2P file sharing consumes a lot of bandwidth as the shared information has to pass unnecessarily to an access point that will not be used in the sense that that specific information is staying within the local network.
This however requires that the access network is built to handle this local connectivity and the access network must still be able to preserve the following four essential requirements:                Service access constraints—It must be possible to restrict end-user access to specific services. It must also be possible to put connectivity restrictions on a per service basis, i.e. possibility of allowing/not allowing one or more of the services provided.        
End-user traffic separation—Traffic to and from an end-user device, as well as information about the end-user device, must not leak to unintended recipients. It must be possible to prevent traffic hijacking.                Defined QoS (Quality of Service) treatment—It must be possible to ensure that the different services get required QoS, and have control over the network resources.        End-user traceability—It must be possible to determine the physical origin of all upstream traffic.        
The impact of P2P on the traffic is shown e.g. by some service providers having taken steps to quantify the impact of the P2P traffic on their networks. Means have been adopted of limiting P2P traffic by inspection of packets or by charging for network usage.
The problems with the existing solutions to the P2P traffic has not been thoroughly studied as regarding to analyzing the impact on the nets which will be used for transporting the traffic. Also today's access networks are not well suited for local P2P as all traffic is forced through a central point, e.g. BRAS, which is not optimized for this type of traffic. The problem is that in the existing solutions the traffic is not allowed to flow directly from one end-user device to another end-user device, which would be much more bandwidth efficient, but is prohibited. The main reason for this is that there is no existing solution for allowing direct communication between end-users while at the same time ensuring the four requirements described above.